Well, obviously, being the new guy around, I'm not sure if this has been brought up, but the search returns nothing.

Anyway, the thing is: Running Wild states that emerged cockroaches are difficult to detect in a node because of their small physical size no less.
Am I the only one to be absolutely shocked by the revelation that persona qualities depend on your physical body ones?
Shouldn't troll characters' personas be more easy to detect then, too? Should maybe high-rating Stealth make you smaller in real world, too?

Resonant characters appearance have been based on their physical appearance. So it follows that they would appear smaller in the matrix. Now as for what difference that would actually make in a world where everyone appearance is adjustable by everyone else I'm with you there, but it makes a somewhat interesting quirk.

I don't have a copy of running wild but perhaps they are hard to detec mearly because of their small proccesing power and the fact that have a very simple interface and theirfore leave a smaller imprint on the matrix. Also your dealing with resonace hear so perhaps they manifest their abilty smallness in a way to minimize their deteciablty on the matrix.
Of course this is all my opinion of the top of my head without reaserch.

You see, the very problem here, Lok1 , is that the book puts it like this, and I quoth quote:

Due to the small physical size of e-roaches, all tests to detect their persona or signature receive a –<N> dice pool modifier.

And LurkerOutThere, I strongly believe that whether you detect someone depends on your Analyze vs their Stealth, not on persona icon graphics. So it's all because of their physical size. It makes them hard to detect in the Matrix.

Well Falon remember that I'm mostly on your side here remember what a stealth program does is makes your icon appear to others as fitting in with the Node. So while i'm hanging out in the nexus my characters Icon is that of a man composed entirely of writhing rattlesnakes who draws those snakes out of himself in the form of attack my stealth program actually comes up with something more appropriate when i'm trying to crack into that Renraku node sculpted like a tea-house. It makes a certain amount of sense, especially given the human propensity for emphasizing open space which presumably doubly carries over to where space isn't limited, by actual physical constraints that a teeny tiny icon would be "somewhat" harder to spot.

The problem with the matrix on all points is the ambuginty most people have. Very few (myself not included) make sure they clearly and compleatly understand the rules (Wich are verry cryptic) and go with a just a geniral knowledge. Thankfully my first GM was a licenced ethical hacker and was very open minded so my first hacker/PC was a compleat success. As it is I slightly disagree with Lurker because their are programs out their that gather the inforrmation and scan for a hostile hacker, the icon that you see is your programs interpetation of the information it gatherd. Programs can be used to feed it the wrong information or confuse it.
As for are little quandry of e-roachs I think that what the rules are trying to say (and doing so badly) is that because of simplicty of E roachs their personas AND signature are harder to trace. Its not the persona's size its the difculty of picking up the persona and projecting its image into your "view" of the matrix that makes detecting them hard.

Sorry for the ramble:
AllenT

Well to be honest knowledge of real world hacking has literally as much to do with Shadowrun Hacking as knowledge of Naval Operations has to do with ability to play Battleship. What I put in above was a paraphrase from the rules as they work currently. Stealth literally works by making you blend either in with that wall made to look like a circuit board or making you look like one of the thousands of faceless peasants who represent emails on the Renraku central host.

The reasonant critters are there to add an interesting facet to the matrix game, therefore we have to take certain caveats in stride. Personally I'm still up in the air on whether I'll use them at all but if your willing to accept the fact that a cockroach can instictively hack into wireless matrix systems with a brain the size of a pin head (if i'm thinking of the right animal brain) then you might accept that it is hard to spot because it's virtual Icon is very small.

This feeds into the differences between regular users and technomancers. I've always felt that the two are too similar, so I change up their appearance. Whereas hackers are defined by the coding behind their icon, technomancers largely operate through force of will, so their icon is generated through something similar to residual self-image from The Matrix, although they can change it. I also describe the icons of technomancers as being perfectly defined, without the digital "haze" associated with the rendering of icons in VR, since their RSI, if you will, is generated through a method more authentic to the human perceptive neural process.

My point is, essentially, that since Matrix is a completely virtual space, the properties of your icon are not in any way defined by its graphics, only by the properties of the commlink you have and the programs you have running. There is noting cryptic about the matrix rules, as a matter of fact, at least they are absolutely clear on the matter. There is no limitation on how your persona looks - that doesn't mean that assuming a molecule-sized persona equals becoming invisible, since your visibility is defined by the way your persona interacts with the node it is in.
And your physical size, as we now know.
I wonder if dragons should get a huge penalty by that logic.

Earlydown, I am pretty sure that the technomancer fluff states them to be emulating matrix software with the wonderful powers of their minds, not just interacting with the Matrix directly. That's why they have Complex Forms to begin with.
As for icons, Unwired states that creating an absolutely realistic icon is possible, just really time consuming and thus expensive. So the wealthy and the hackers are likely to have more realistic icons than those of the masses.

I'm not saying that technomancers don't execute their desires through Complex Forms. I'm saying that the way a technomancer understands and represents code may differ drastically from how a hacker does. All the fluff says is that the complex forms translate Resonance into something that conventional matrix gear can work with. Resonance is not only undefined by the fluff, but fairly aggressively obscured. It's not magic, but it's sure as hell not zeroes-and-ones linear computing either.

I'm not trying to tell you how to portray technos in your game, but the rules show that technomancers interact with the Matrix in some fairly non-standard ways (Resonance signatures, compiling proto-AIs with no hardware basis), so I choose to represent them as a sublime, almost inconceivable icon, unless they focus Resonance into the proper Complex Form to disguise their (literal) resonance.

Look. I'm glad you are enjoying your gaming experience, and I don't contest your right to make technomancers as much special snowflakes as you wish - barely visible personas, death rays from eyes, glittering when they go out on a sunny day - whatever floats your boat.
Just don't say that's the "correct" variant, or that it's universally better than playing by the book.